"Gnome 3 has received a lot of disapproval of late, from the Gnome foundation being charged with not taking care of its users, or losing mindshare, to Gnome 3 itself being an unusable mess. I've been using Gnome 3 myself for a few months to sort the truth from the fiction, and to try and understand just how the Gnome foundation expects their newest shell to be used. I will end with some thoughts on how Gnome 3 can be improved. The review will require a fairly lengthy preface, however."

I'm pretty sure it went something like this for most of these haters (gnome shell & unity alike):
"Oh holy balls! This is different from what I'm used to. I'm gonna try it for 20 minutes and then give up."
...20 minutes later...
"Well, I still don't like this so it must be the worst atrocity in computing since Microsoft Bob."
"Granted, I've been saying that the Linux desktop should be different from Windows but what I really mean is that it should be the same but with themes."